Why Eric Grimsrud is wrong about climate

Seems Dr. Eric Grimsrud has a problem with my article. He added two comments so far. Here I reply to his comments. My reply is of necessity too long for a comment. So I publish my reply as this new post.

You believe your key to proof is to personally denigrate all who claim your scientific conclusion is wrong.

Back in Climate Clash, you claimed Richard Lindzen was a pseudo scientist because you could not prove his published papers on climate were wrong.

You are preoccupied with the question of “Who is the smartest?” You believe the answer to this question determines who is correct about climate. It doesn’t.

You brag about your scientific papers because you believe the number of your published papers proves you are correct about climate. It doesn’t.

All your published papers were about a relatively narrow subject in chemistry. You have no demonstrated expertise outside this narrow field. You have no expertise in numerical models, meteorology or climate physics.

You brag about the subjects you studied. You believe this proves you are correct about climate. It doesn’t.

Your list shows you missed the most important course: the philosophy of science.

You do not follow the scientific method. In Climate Clash, you actually claimed we did not have time to use the scientific method because your imagined climate disaster was too imminent and dangerous. Time has proved you wrong.

You ignore that to prove your hypothesis you must begin with the null hypothesis: “Climate is normal until proven otherwise.”

If you can’t prove the null hypothesis is wrong then your climate hypothesis is wrong. You have not proved climate is abnormal. Nor has anyone else.

You explained above your simplistic “Al Gore” description of the greenhouse effect. You ignore important influences and feedbacks when you draw your simplistic conclusion from your simplistic hypothesis.

You ignore that people a lot smarter than you inserted your simplistic hypothesis into climate models. The climate models tried to “prove” human carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming. They failed.

You ignore the key to science: If a prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. You ignore that climate models make serious incorrect predictions. Therefore, they are wrong.

We have had 37 years to test climate models. The 102 climate model average over-predicts temperature by a factor of 2.5. That’s like missing your basketball shot by 2.5 hoop diameters. If your prediction is wrong, your theory is wrong.

In passing, you seem to approve it’s OK for Steve Running and the U of Montana to claim he has Nobel Peace Prize, when he does not. Further, you seem to approve it’s OK to claim a Peace Prize proves one is qualified in science.

In other words, you approve lying if it helps you achieve your goal.

You claim your “bit of physics” explains the climate problem. You admit meteorology is very complicated. Well, so is atmospheric physics. Both physics and meteorology are central to climate science. That’s why you don’t understand it.

So here is your test.

You must show how the work of the following scientists are wrong. If you can’t show they are wrong, this will prove you are wrong. No name-calling here. Just science.

Soon, Connolly & Connolly published a 2015 peer-reviewed paper that plots temperature, total solar irradiance, and CO2 from 1880 to present. The plots show global temperature correlates with total solar irradiance but not with CO2. No correlation, no cause-effect.

Explain how their paper is wrong. Because if they are correct then you are wrong.

Chuck Wiese shows how your climate hypothesis is incorrect here. Chuck is a meteorologist and an expert on radiation transfer in the atmosphere. He understands the physics of climate far better than you do, Eric. You must show Wiese is wrong or you are wrong.

Professor Murry Salby presents two video lectures here and here. Watch them. While you are at it, pick up a copy of his book, “Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate” here.

If you can’t understand Salby’s book or lectures then you should stop pretending you are an atmospheric scientist. Salby uses math and data to prove the rate of change of carbon dioxide is a function of temperature, and temperature is not a function of carbon dioxide. This proves our carbon dioxide does not cause climate change.

Please show where Salby made a mistake in his analysis. Because if he is right, then you are wrong.

David Evans is an expert mathematician. He found climate models contain serious errors. He concludes:

A mistake in climate model architecture changes everything. Heat trapped by increasing carbon dioxide just reroutes to space from water vapor instead.

The scare over carbon dioxide was just due to a simple modelling error. A whole category of feedbacks was omitted, which greatly exaggerated the calculated sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

How do you like that? Your scare and alarmism over carbon dioxide was due to a simple modelling error.

Evans also found the sun’s behavior follows a mathematical “notch filter” pattern. You may not know what a notch filter is because you have no experience in advanced numerical mathematics.

Evan’s discovery shows the sun’s behavior (which is not included in the climate models) explains almost all of the recent global warming that you claim is due to human carbon dioxide. His discovery also predicts the 2020’s will be cooler than the 1980’s.

Unless you can show how David Evans is wrong, your game is over, Eric.

It’s time for you to tell your grandkids you lied to them. They don’t have to minimize their carbon footprints. They don’t have to stop fossil-fueled electric power plants. They don’t have to promote wind energy and drive electric cars. They can enjoy life. They can help improve America.

The planet has not warmed since they were born. Their future will be colder than the past.

Climate is a very complex subject. It has degrees of freedom that you have not learned about in chemistry. It is so complicated that no one can learn it all. Climate scientists must specialize. The specialists know much more about climate than you or I will ever know.

They are smarter than you are, Eric. And yes, data show I am smarter than you. I have more education and experience in climate physics and meteorology than you have. So get over it.

Who’s the smartest is not the issue. Unlike you, I do not claim my experience in climate physics and meteorology proves I am correct about climate. I accept being wrong when data prove me wrong.

You, on the other hand, are easily bamboozled.

Science is about the quality of the argument and nothing else.

Now you have your homework to do. Unless you can show Soon, Wiese, Salby, and Evans are wrong, then you are wrong about climate.

Thus, for a CO2 molecule at sea level conditions, it is at least 30,000 times more likely that a collision will occur (thermal conduction) than a photon will be emitted. The process of a molecule absorbing the energy in a photon and conducting the energy to other molecules is thermalization. There are thousands more absorption ‘opportunities’ for water vapor compared to CO2. Thermalized energy warms the air causing convection. It carries no identity of the molecule that absorbed it.

Reverse thermalization, where the warmed jostling molecules excite some molecules to emit a photon is almost entirely to water vapor molecules at sea level conditions. The reason is relaxation time of some water vapor rotational emission lines is 0.5 µsec compared to 6 µsec for CO2. Radiation from any molecule is omnidirectional.

Thermalization and the short relaxation time of some water vapor rotational emission lines which is 0.5 µsec compared to 6 µsec for CO2 , explain why CO2 has no significant effect on climate. Discover what does (98% match with measurements 1895-2015) at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

In the second edition of Climate, History and the Modern World, Hubert Lamb specifically warned of the danger of attributing human causes to natural climate fluctuations. His advice was to continue researching climate and to keep watch on the impacts of change, but not to attribute too much to the idea of the importance of human activity.

Lamb wrote, “In fact, from about the beginning of this century up to 1940 a substantial climatic change was in progress, but it was in a direction which tended to make life easier and to reduce stresses for most activities and most people in most parts of the world. Average temperatures were rising, though without too many hot extremes, and they were rising most of all in the Arctic where the sea ice was receding. Europe enjoyed several decades of near-immunity from severe winters, and the variability of temperature from year to year was reduced. More rainfall was reaching the dry places in the interiors of the great continents (except in the Americas where the lee effect, or ‘rain-shadow’, of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes became more marked as the prevalence of westerly winds in middle latitudes increased).
…
And the monsoons became more regular in India and west Africa. Planning on the climatic statistics of the preceding decades was in fact allowing wider safety margins for many activities than was apparent up to some time about 1950.”
End of quote.

The following paper confirmed Lamb’s remark by assessing how climate zones changed during the 20th century based on the Koppen classification System modified by Trewartha (KTC)..The relevance of the KTC system is that the temperature and precipitation criteria are based on plant ecology. This subsumes animal ecology because animals depend on plants.

Belda, M., Holtanová, E., Halenka, T. and Kalvová, J., 2014. Climate classification revisited: from Köppen to Trewartha. Climate research, 59(1), pp.1-13.
Paper:
The URL may require patience, but it does work. The Belda web site has supplementary information and maps.

This study is probably the best to date in reconstructing the Koppen-Trewartha climate classification map using global gridded data. The maps constructed by the authors show the climate regions of the world (except Antarctica) for two periods, 1901-1931 and 1975-2005, based on CRU(UK) global temperature data interpolated to a 30 minute grid, average area about 2500 km2. Precipitation data was from a separate source.

(About 50,000 grid cells cover 135 million km2, the land area of the Earth except Antarctica.)

Between the two periods separated by 75 years, 8% of the cells changed climate type. When you plot a scatter diagram of distributions for the two periods, you will find there is little divergence from the straight line passing through the origin and with slope unity. R-squared is 99.5.

The paper does not discuss error bars. However, the climate date has since been revised to remove wet bias. This correction would increase R2 by reducing the number of cells that have changed climate type. Since a large percentage of changed cells shifted because of increased wetness, the correction for wet bias may significantly reduce the estimated changes in climate zones during the period 1901-2005.

In any other field of Earth science, using data with similar precision, we would conclude that we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the two data Koppen-Trewartha climate maps, separated by 75 years, are not significantly different.

We can accept that the Earth has warmed a little and some places now get little more precipitation, and most people worldwide are much better off than their parents and grandparents. In relative terms, the people benefiting the most from the changes are those on the margins of steppe to desert and those on the margins between ice and tundra. But they are few in number.

As Roger Pielke and his colleagues have demonstrated, financial losses from extreme weather events is mostly due to the fact people have much more to lose now compared to a century ago.

As those of us who work in the field of economic development see so often, population growth has forced settlement of more risky locations. While land use control in a country like Malaysia has prevented settlement at the coast and in the flood plains of rivers, few other tropical countries have effective controls. The end result has been to attribute to extreme weather events failure of institutions to cope with socioeconomic change.

Inspection of changes in Koppen-Trewartha climate zones reveals that at the end of the century, the changes were consistent with Lamb’s view that “it was in a direction which tended to make life easier and to reduce stresses for most activities and most people in most parts of the world.”

I remember the 1930’s and since 1960, I have lived and worked in 18 countries. The only change in climate that I can remember is the cooling during the 1960’s to early 1970’s. It seems that pre-WW2 conditions have returned. This does not seem to me a cause for alarm.

Anyone who is under the age of about 70, such as Dr Mann or Mr Obama, cannot be relied upon when he claims that he knows climate has changed because he has seen it during his lifetime.

Such witnesses are too young. Already by 1955, popular US gardening books and magazines were reporting the warming trend revealed by changes in the dates of first and last frost. My grandfather had a horse barn not far from the city center, but no horse. In the barn was a big sleigh that he used when winters were longer and colder with more snow and little rain.

We know now the warming changes was a result of the waning of the Little Ice Age.

The demographic group most skeptical about climate change are US farmers, who happen to be older on average than other professionals and closer to nature than most. They remember as I do that temperature and rainfall fluctuate, but the fluctuations go both ways, up and down.

Yes, climate might be changing and some day we might have sufficient evidence to be certain about how much and in which direction. We might even discover whether the change is for better or worse.

But that day has not yet arrived and may not arrive during the lifetime of any scientist now practicing. In my opinion, climatism will go the way of eugenics long before then.

Kevin, So you think the thoughts of a self proclaimed Physicist who is actually at Meteorologist can not be challenged by someone who does not claim to have a degree in physics. The “research” you claim to have done on our backgrounds is a bit shallow and, in addition, in this country the peer reviewed journals publish articles or not based on the contents of those articles. And that is undoubtedly why you will find no articles in the peer reviewed literature concerning global effects of trace atmospheric substances author by a Dr. Ed X Berry. Nevertheless, we live in a wonderful country in which the wisdom of fools can be heartily embraced by other fools. The clue the binds them is generally ideology rather than science.

@ Eric Grimsrud, your response says it all. You are too biased and filled with ego to be a credible scientist. Your ego blocks the truth from making itself known to you. Words of Wisdom… the Truth will set you free. Wow!

Thanks for the personal advice, BUT: I am indeed biased – towards the outcomes that come from through thoroughly reviewed science. Always have been and always will be.

Concerning ego, I certainly hope I do have some of that also. Our greatest scientists had quite a lot of it and needed it in order to not be bowled over by the quacks and less insightful of their era.

Perhaps you think that we believe in the Laws of Gravity today because Sir Issac Newton was a “nice guy”!! Science if serious stuff in which peer reviewed studies, only, make an impact. Science driving by political ideologies only pollutes science if paid any attention to.

Dr. Eric Grimsrud seems unable to understand that our climate (as well as our weather) is more complex than a single effect from a relatively minor atmospheric constituent, carbon dioxide. I wonder if he even realizes that the theory that magnifies the CO2 greenhouse effect REQUIRES a three times positive boost from water vapor. If that boost is not there or is net negative, then the entire Global Warming paradigm falls apart.

But for the moment, let’s assume that he is right and check the observables claimed in the government’s scientific arguments. These are called their “Three Lines of Evidence” and are to be found in EPA arguments justifying their Endangerment Finding on CO2 and President Obama’s National Climate Assessment 2014.

The first of these is a claim of unusual warming since the great industrialization following WW2 and the consequent rise of atmospheric CO2. In the seven decades since, we saw modest cooling from 1945 to 1977, modest warming from 1977 to 1997, and no warming trend thereafter. If CO2 is supposed to be the Earth’s thermostat, it is surely not working well.

The second government claim is that a Hot Spot in the tropical mid-troposphere should exist as a signature of rising CO2. None does.

Finally, the government claims that their billion dollar climate models, which incorporate all they know about our climate, can accurately predict our climate future. As Dr. Ed Berry has mentioned, they fail miserably. But don’t take his word for it, look at Santer et al., PNAS 2013. They are all alarmists and find the temperature trend running high in the models by a factor of two. Other comparisons find the discrepancy to be as high as a factor of three.

These are surely FATAL FLAWS that say the government is wrong about CO2.

As to theoretical considerations, David Evans, Ferenc Miskolczi, and Chuck Wiese are correct that the small amount of heat trapped by increasing CO2 merely reroutes to space via water vapor. Water vapor provides the Earth’s thermostat. That is why there are no water vapor catastrophes and why temperatures in tropical regions are so stable.

If Eric Grimsrud wants an accurate understanding of the Earth’s climate he needs to study the many contributions of water vapor. Combined with Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and ocean circulation, these factors determine our climate.

Gordon, Of course, water vapor is the big positive feedback gas. Even Svante Arrhenius used that fact in his models done back in 1896.

Ed, What a bunch of irrelevant and fabricated crap you are able to pull out of your trash can. I am surprised you didn’t note that my grandmother wore army boots. But glad to see you still have an illiterate peanut gallery that enjoys the entertainment you provide. I am disappointed however that you have not yet made it to the “big time” of science denial – such as a “science advisor” on the Rush Limbaugh show (or possibly you have and I just missed it). In any case, keep me informed of your “progress”. I enjoy a good laugh now and then and can always use choice examples of how moronic and irresponsible pseudo scientists can be. Eric

75 years have passed since the industrial revolution, Appell and failed climate models have predicted we would see this by now. The dishonesty, lying and twisting facts are unforgivable.

Taxpayers have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on this junk science to preserve the careers of those in academia promoting this that need to be fired.

It is apparent by now, this junk science is political and being used to justify stealing more private capital in the name of the taxes it promotes that accomplish nothing except to continue to feed this pig trough.

The data has been constructed and thoroughly distributed, Appell. I have displayed it several times on Oregon Live posts. You just refuse to accept it and continue to deny the observations disprove its existence.

Here is the proof published by the International Journal of Climatology:

Appell, Fred Singer did not claim he and John Chisty were recipients of the IPCC Nobel Peace Prize. You overlooked the part in parenthesis “by virtue of having our names listed in IPCC reports.”

Singer clearly recognized that a listing of names does not constitute receiving the Prize. Further, John Christy recognized (in the Wall Street Journal) that the listing was only an unofficial Prize and only a recognition of having worked for the IPCC:

I’ve had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don’t think I will add “0.0001 Nobel Laureate” to my resume.

Climate alarmists, however, like Running, Mann, and others, continue to claim they own a Nobel Peace Prize even after the IPCC issued a statement that they did not. Climate alarmists like you, Eric and Running, twist facts to suit your preconceived belief not only about climate science but also about Nobel Prizes. Your attempt to justify Running’s lie and your refusal to admonish Running for his lie speaks volumes about your personal integrity.

You say “Of course, water vapor is the big positive feedback gas.” Do you understand that this is an assumption? When tested against robust satellite temperature data and radiosondes, the present day climate models FAIL badly. That says the assumption is wrong. And as several other scientists have pointed out, there are also good solid theoretical reasons why water vapor cannot amplify the little warming from CO2 and actually works to keep the temperature stable.

As to your sarcasm, do you understand that scientists who can defend their perspectives do not resort to bad behavior? You don’t want to sink to the level of David Appell. He dropped out of science decades ago to become a journalist and then a political operative.

But you might want to follow the lead of well known climate alarmists who are now trying to distance themselves from what one of them termed the “nonsense.”

Here are quotes from three famous alarmists including the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, Mike Hulme. Hulme said: “To state that climate change will be ‘catastrophic’ hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.”

In an interview conducted by John Humphrys of BBC4 television in 2012, well-known alarmist Ralph Cicerone, President of the US National Academy of Sciences, revealed his split with extremists:

“John Humphrys: You don’t sound, if I can use this word, apocalyptic. I mean, you’re not saying “If we don’t do these things, we’re going to hell in a hand-basket, we’re going to fry, in a few years.”

Ralph Cicerone: Well there are people who are saying those things, John.

Humphrys: But not you.

Ralph Cicerone: No, I don’t think it’s useful, I don’t think it gets us anywhere, and we don’t have that kind of evidence.”

Perhaps most remarkable, Gavin Schmidt, who replaced James Hansen at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies and is especially known for his climate advocacy said: “General statements about extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the literature but seem to abound in the popular media….It’s this popular perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the time, even though if anyone thinks about that for ten seconds they realize that’s nonsense.”

These alarmists are not giving up on global warming. They still support a roughly three degree C temperature rise from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 that necessarily includes positive feedback from CO2. But they are clearly trying to distance themselves from all the political nonsense concerning catastrophe.

This means that there are really three distinct perspectives on Global Warming, two scientific and one political. With skeptical scientists saying that warming from CO2 will be one degree C or less (for a doubling of CO2), this is less of a debate among scientists and more of a debate between scientists and those who see the continued hysteria as useful for political purposes and have little or no scientific skill.

“Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid? The short answer is ‘no’. The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.

“The truth is that there are lots of causes besides errors in the fundamental model physics that could lead to the model/observation discrepancy. I summarize a number of these possible causes below. Without convincing evidence of model physics flaws (and I haven’t seen any), I would say that the possible causes described below need to be investigated and ruled out before we can pin the blame on fundamental modelling errors.”

Appell: Your continued incompetence about atmospheric science is astounding. You’d think that after a decade of your meddling in the subject you would have learned something. But this just convinces me more you are a political activist and your science training takes a back door to reality just like Joe Romm.

I wrote the following e-mail to Mears about his ridiculous claims he made about satellite vs. surface temperature data last January 15th in an article written by political activist Seth Borenstein. To date, he hasn’t answered me because like you, he uses a scientific credential to play politics with. Here is an exact reprint of my e-mail I sent that Mears did not answer. You don’t know what you’re talking about:

Dear Mr. Mears:

You were quoted in the below referenced article written by Seth Borenstein:

“The satellite measurements do not measure the surface warming. They are measurements of the average temperature of thick layers of the atmosphere” about 50,000 feet off the ground. For impacts on human society and the environment, the surface data are more important,” Mears said.

This is not true and you should have the technical prowess to know this. The RSS and UAH systems not only are fine tuned to measure lower tropospheric temperatures which they do, but the lower troposphere’s sensible heat energy is connected to the surface by convective heat transfer through the adiabatic lapse rate, the Poisson equation and potential temperature. The differing instantaneous values between the surface and lower troposphere are immaterial. It is the trends we are interested in tracking and further, the satellite systems measure a much broader equivalent surface area of the earth than ever possible in the surface thermometer record. You should also be aware of the numerous problems with the surface network of observing stations due to the abandonment of the surface observing program by NOAA beginning in 1985 when the MARS program ( modernization and restructuring ) of the National Weather Service began whose focus was on numerical modeling and forecasting that replaced the irreplaceable observing program with what is in place today. NOAA to date has also not given any on the outside of the agency any scientifically plausible explanation of why it lowered measured temperatures of the sea surface record and replaced them with guestimates. As you know, that erased the level off in global temperatures that has been in existence since 1998.

Do you care to explain your statements you are quoted with in the article? They make no sense to me. This article appears to be a political hit piece on Senator Cruz rather than a good piece of science. Aren’t scientists in your agency supposed to be objective about their work and refrain from participating in politics or political agendas?

Gordon, Your consideration of potential outcomes of global warming did not include the worst one – runaway affects caused by the natural emissions of methane as the world’s T increases. The Earth has been cooling on average for about 50 million years and a lot of the biological life produced over that period is now in the form of methane hydrates beneath our oceans as well as bio matter of all sorts in the tundra or our Arctic land masses. As the Earth warms the emission of these volatile forms of carbon will increase – potentially leading to a runaway process that continues until those forms of carbon have all been changed to atmospheric CO2. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of global warming and has happened before – about 56Myrs ago, for example, when the Earth was warming due most probably to plate tectonics. Look it up. Eric

You just said that discussing methane emissions is “changing the subject” from that of CO2 !! Do you not know that CH4 has a half life of only 10 years in the atmosphere as it is oxidized to CO2? Thus, for the long term CH4 emissions are the same as CO2 emissions with the additional problem that while in the CH4 form for those 10 years, it is even a much stronger GHG than CO2.

In your resume summary you did not point out any experience or education in the field of chemistry. In order to manage a discussion of AGW, at least a bit of knowledge, in addition to physics, is helpful, if not required. Your welcome, Eric

This from a man who says I was merely “bragging” when I listed my credentials – all of which can be verified via the documents, and professional employment data – in response to a request for my scientific background from another participant of this discussion. With such an example set by the “moderator” of this debate, why would he expect its participants to occasionally follow suit?

Ed, you did a great job of denigrating Eric in the body of your post. What you wrote him was rude, bullying and disrespectful. So I don’t see that you have any ground to complain about Eric’s comments after that.

Dan, the authors of the paper you cite apparently missed the recent study showing that the recent slowdown of global warming was due primarily to the increase in particulate matter primarily from China. The authors you cite did not seem to be aware of this but still used that slowdown as the basis of their study. Eric

Dear Eric, the study about the possible effect of particulates from China on global warming is a hypothesis. Indeed, particulates can have an effect but only climate models, when they work, can indicate the magnitude of the effect compared to other climate forces.

Soon’s paper shows CO2 is not an important driver of climate. The study you reference does not refute Soon’s conclusions.

Dr. Fulks: From reading your responses, I think you are a reasonable, rational thinker, and I would like your indulgence in a few questions I have about the current state of climate science.
1) From what I read in the current literature, there does not appear to be an in-depth understanding of the geophysical fluid dynamics of ocean-atmosphere coupling. Apparently, computer models do not have algorithms that definitively describe these processes, except for maybe averaging some values from other models. If this is the case, I think being woefully ignorant of the fluid dynamics of 70% of the earth surface leads one’s hypothesis about the earth’s climate to be based on belief, not science. The two major geophysical fluids of the earth have interactions that take place over long periods of time, coupled with our rotation around the sun, is indeed a wonderment, and should not be trivialized and reduced to some false narrative that supports a disgusting hubris exhibited by many ecologists and politicians.
2) If the sun is 99.86 % of the mass of our solar system, and the earth is .0003 % of the mass of the solar system, how can the sun’s energy not be the driving force behind our climate. The sun is a variable star, and just the slightest change in output, positive or negative, can have tremendous and immediate influence on our climate, along with the long term absorption of the sun’s energy into the oceans. As an example, currently, the sun’s lack of activity now has caused quite a stir in solar physics circles–even the AGW bastion of the Potsdam Institute. A few of the solar physicists at Potsdam are indicating we are possibly heading into a mini-ice age.
3) How can poorly understood interactions of the earth, our moon, the sun (and even the other planets of the solar system) be a bases for “settled science”?
4) How can any person claiming to be a scientist be so adamant about believing poorly parametrized models as definitive proof of earth’s climate? Are we entering into another dark age against rational thinking?
5) It does not appear that climate scientist in general do not dispute the sun is the driver of ENSO, as such, why is CO2 considered to be the main driver of our climate? Enso most assuredly is composed of more powerful forces than a trace molecule.

It doesn’t matter, Appel and I’ve explained this to you over and over but you refuse to accept it because of your political agenda.

Climate models are weather models…integrated through large time intervals. To get an answer at the end, the grid sizes to calculate atmospheric parameters with become far too large to accurately advect or transform energy through time as is required.

The weather solutions fall apart within a few das and the suggestion that this doesn’t matter is based upon a giant leap of faith that the energy that leaks out of these models because of the grids will somehow “balance out” through time.
Add to this the fact that the models CANNOT model the hydrological cycle which is what governs the earth’s OLR and you have a model that costs billions of dollars to run and in reality is an overrated heap of junk.

Climate models are much more involved than weather models, because they have to consider things weather models do not: radiative transfer (especially), surface albedo, and ocean dynamics, just to name a few of the huge ones.

So I was wrong on a few things: weather models do include radiation and albedo, I am told, but the modeling errors in them generally have less impact on a weather forecast accuracy than the atmospheric dynamics, so have historically not been looked at as much.

The UKMO model has exactly the same radiation in the weather and climate models.

But weather models usually have no ocean dynamics, though they might try to estimate SSTs. Ocean dynamics only matter for seasonal or decadal forecasts. Not including them makes a weather model run faster.

But weather models, being run only for 10 days or so, don’t need to consider solar irradiance changes or volcanic aerosols. (The latter are put in a random time steps based on their historical frequency.) They don’t, of course, have to consider representative concentration pathways or land use changes; those simply don’t matter for forecasts on the order of 10 days or so.

And weather models are initialized in a much different way climate models, via initial values at the start instead of being spun up from a century or more earlier.

“The sun is a variable star, and just the slightest change in output, positive or negative.”

The Earth’s climate simply isn’t very sensitive to changes in solar irradiance. You can begin to get a sense of this by using the simple non-atmosphere non-greenhouse energy balance equation for a rotating planet:

(1-albedo)*S/4 = emissivity*sigma*T^4

where S is the solar irradiance (1365 W/m2) and T the surface temperature (255 K). Differentiating,

dT/dS = T/4S = 0.05 K/(W/m2)

which is the same value the IPCC 5AR gives, +/- 0.05 K/(W/m2). See the IPCC 5AR WG1 Figure SPM.5 p14.

Moreover, average solar irradiance (over a solar cycle) has been slowly decreasing since the 1960s; see the 7th graph on this page:

The last time I checked, Appell, the derivative of a constant is zero. If the IR black body flux from the earth’s surface by the equation you give is calculated based upon solving for T giving 255K with the solar irradiance set at 1365 Wm-2, then dF/dT = 4*sigma*T^3, giving .27K/Wm-2, not .05K/Wm-2. That’s 5.4 times greater.

And given the fact that solar irradiance modulates surface evaporation and tropospheric temperature, the water vapor flux will also spool up and down accordingly and amplify the radiative effects from the surface.

I would venture that long term solar irradiance trends lasting beyond the normal fluxes of the 22 year cycle would produce a far more significant effect on global temperatures than you or the IPCC contends using an incorrect computation.

For example, if Abdussamotov is correct in predicting a 2Wm-2 drop in solar irradiance heading towards the assumed coming Maunder or Dalton minimum that would cause a .54K or .54C drop in global temperature without any feedbacks over the next 30 years.

Dear David, Imagine you are a grad student working on your PhD. You are to give a lecture to the physics professors about the work of Evans and Abdussamotov. Your lecture consists of saying their work is “laughable.”

Do you think this will help you get your PhD in physics? No. It would help you get kicked out of grad school at any good university.

So please enlighten us on your “analysis of Abdussamatov’s prediction” and explain to us in detail why “notch theory” does not explain why the solar effect gets delayed by one solar cycle.

You are now on the hook to explain exactly where and how Evans made a math error in his analysis of the data.

His prediction of a 6 W/m2 drop in solar irradiance in 30 years looks absurd. (Yes, you can say “absurd” to your PhD advisor.)

Look at the data yourself instead of insulting me. Bluster is not an argument..

David Evans’ “notch theory” is junk, as many good bloggers have written about. It’s too vague to calculate much of anything, and it posits a “force” for which there’s no evidence. It’s a hail Mary pass wobbling like a duck.

Let’s see Evans get a paper published in a real journal — not some pretend journal like Energy & Environment which is only a place for wobbly papers to go when they cannot go anywhere else.

“And “so far” with Abdussamatov isn’t fair. We are just at the beginning of when his forecasts call for the solar irradiance reduction.”

Of course it’s fair — Abdussamatov made a specific prediction. He drew a specific line on his graph, of predicted TSI. His prediction didn’t include any indication of uncertainties or confidence bands.

His prediction for 2016 can now be evaluated — he’s too low by a significant margin (as far as TSI changes go), as I showed in my blog post.

Appell: Your derivation incorporates the spherical geometry of the earth vs. the solar disk. So irrespective of the fact that this reduces the effect of solar irradiance per watt per unit area of power by a factor of four on temperature, the comparison using solar irradiance to geometry is not a true one to one comparison because the wavelength peak of the solar disk is more energetic at .5 microns than the peak of the earth’s IR emission spectrum peak near 10 microns.

So using your equation to predict a temperature change strictly on this is not realistic. In your example, you would need a loss of 20 Wm-2 of solar irradiance to get a temperature reduction of 1 degC.

Comparing relative intensities of IR and solar irradiance, S, over all wavelengths as a proportion,

Ts^4/Te^4 x Rs^2/Re^2 = 20E4/215E2 = 3.46

So, Appell, this means the solar irradiance at TOA is 3.46 times greater than the earth’s ground radiation in the IR. If you reduce the solar irradiance by 2 Wm-2 using your calculation you would need to adjust the reduction upward by this factor to be more realistic. This means if you reduce the solar insolation by 2 Wm-2, your calculation of .10 degC more realistically would be .10 degC x 3.46 = .35 degC without any feedbacks. That is closer to my initial computation using a new equilibrium with the earth’s ground radiation was at .54 degC than your .10 degC result would be.

This are significant changes, much greater than your assumed ignorance about GHG’s which would add to the effect because of the unspooling of atmospheric water vapor. There is no question in my mind that this is a part of the reason that there is a near perfect inverse correlation between solar cycle length and earth temperature. The longer the cycle, the weaker the irradiance.

Hey Appell, It looks like I put an operator error into my calculator because double checking these proportions again using the inverse square law as I did above but break out the numbers instead you get:

So the suns insolation is 5.4 times that of the earth’s ground radiation.
So if you run your computation and adjust for this, if Abdussamatov expects a reduction of 2 Wm-2 of solar irradiance based upon the geometric radiations in your example, then 2Wm-2 = .10 degC x 5.4 = .54 degC, exactly where it calculates using a new ground IR equilibrium as I first calculated without feedbacks.

So like I said Appell, your method ignores the difference in radiating intensities, therefore gives an incorrect answer. You need to use the new IR equilibrium flux from the earth or adjust the ratio of solar insolation to earth ground radiation using the inverse square law.

The effect of even small amounts of solar insolation on the climate are significant, Appell. Especially since the feedback here would be positive with an unspooling of the water vapor optical depth. I could see that it would be very easy to lose a full 1 degC of global temperature if the solar insolation decreased by 2 Wm-2. And this is unlike the negative feedback CO2 has on water vapor that negates CO2’s radiative forcing.

Appell, you are the most bumbling, disingenuous fool I have ever debated climate issues with.

The fundamental equation you used that is famous everywhere in “climate science” is most certainly dependent on the spherical geometry of the earth and solar disk.

Fully written it equates (1-a)*S*pi*r^2 = 4*pi^r2*epsilon*sigma*T^4,
where a is albedo, S solar irradiance at TOA, epsilon the emissivity of the ground ( which I took as 1 ) and T absolute temperature.

So what, then, does pi*r^2 = 4*pi*r^2 represent Appell? The SPHERICAL GEOMETRY OF THE EARTH AND SOLAR DISK! That is EXACTLY why solar irradiance is divided by 4 in equating the area of the solar disk ( taken as a circle ) to the area of a sphere which represents the earth that would have an area 4 times greater than a circle.

This is why I told you that your grossly over simplified expression doesn’t cut it if you are calculating that solar irradiance doesn’t need an adjustment upward if it is being compared to a black body like the earth that is radiating its own temperature over the entire sphere, which it nearly is AND that the ratio of intensity of solar radiation to earth radiation is greater than one, which it is. The wavelength peaks of both differ by a quanta of 20.

In your shallow example according to you, the equation you give ( from the apparently incompetent IPCC ) states that you would need a drop of 20Wm-2 of solar insolation to get the earth’s temperature to fall by 1degC. Now in this universal climate science equation as is supposed to be in physics, energy in equals energy out. So using the derivative of earth ground flux using Stefan Boltzman with respect to temperature, dF/dT, as I stated above is 3.75 Wm-2K-1 from .27degC/Wm-2. If the sun’s output to the earth fell by 20Wm-2, then the new ground radiation from the earth MUST fall into a new equilibrium with this, hence 20Wm-2/3.75Wm-2K-1 = 5.33 degC. What’s wrong with this picture, Appell? There is a difference of a whopping 4.33 degC and the disappearance of 16.25 Wm-2 of energy which is enough to trigger a new major ice age of the earth vs. just a major cooling if you are correct.

A new equilibrium with solar insolation change MUST be with respect to the energy emitted by the earth over its entire sphere, not a circular disk, Appell, or the numbers won’t reconcile.

A loss of 20 Wm-2 of insolation to the earth would have a devastating effect and much greater than a 1 degC change as you claim which is slightly more than giving up the last centuries warming.

When you said “this is basic high school stuff” in your comments above, you were right and that’s the problem. You haven’t graduated beyond this level in making the ridiculous claims that you do about climate.

In summary, Appell, the only way your heuristic equation would work on changing the solar constant to a variable like you did is if the ratios of solar radiation to earth ground radiation were equal to one.

But as the inverse square law of radiation demonstrates that I used above, the ratio is 5.4 meaning the suns radiation is 5.4 times greater than the earth’s IR ground radiation. Without an adjustment to varying the solar radiation, your numbers will come nowhere close to the true change in earth temperature if you vary solar insolation. It should be obvious to a guy with a PhD in physics like you that a colder object needs much less energy input or output ( like the earth) to change its temperature than a hot object like the sun that is far more energetic. Why doesn’t the IPCC or you understand this?

Appell: You are dead wrong. You couldn’t be more incorrect. Your references use two faulty approaches in determining the effect of solar irradiance on earth temperature. The first you already proposed is a non reality of computing earth temperature by the strict geometry of the earth compared to the solar disk and the second, attempting to get a result by changing the irradiance using failed climate models that have already grossly exaggerated the effect of CO2 radiation on temperature by a factor of 3. So of course, you’ll never get a correct answer when CO2 is treated compared to the earth’s radiating temperature not being able to predict the hydrological cycle or cloud/vapor ratios, causing a fake, erroneous positive feedback to water vapor and not being able to transform or use energy accurately with a large time integrations, and solar irradiance is treated in your example by taking a temperature change with respect to solar irradiance rather than earth radiation and treating the energy over all wavelengths as being equal, which it is not.

And in reality, Appell, add an atmosphere and ocean to the sphere and then oceanic and atmospheric heat conduction, convection, advection are circulation and transport systems that mobilize the S/4 energy in your grossly simple expression that contains none of these and spreads this heat energy across the entire sphere in both hemispheres and adds 33 degC of surplus GLOBAL temperature.

The radiation is not 1:1. The peak of solar irradiance at.5 microns has a quanta 20 times the earth’s radiation. This is critically important as to how solar radiation interacts with all the matter on earth, particularly the oceans that need nearly 100 meters of depth to absorb all of the solar visible and UV light. That is converted to massive amounts of global heat energy. Compare it to long IR wavelengths such as from CO2 and all of that radiation is absorbed in less that a centimeter of ocean depth.

With these facts, Appell, your assertion that the earth’s temperature would only cool 1 degC if 20Wm-2 of solar radiation were lost is patently absurd. A loss of ANY solar irradiance goes directly to a large loss of tropical oceanic heat energy where solar irradiance is highest and where the maximum exchange of latitudinal energy occurs because of this at 40 degrees North latitude. At this point, 59% of the total surface area of the hemisphere is realized between that latitude and the equator making it easy for the remainder to receive energy all the way to either pole.

While my using the Stefan Boltzman derivative of dF/dT is not an absolute answer, it must be far closer to reality than your claim which ignores the other physical factors that distribute tropical energy poleward, making your application a silly assumption.

A loss of solar insolation to the tune of 20 Wm-2 would have a devastating impact upon all life on earth and trigger a significant ice age. And a 2 Wm-2 loss as suggested by Abdussamatov will cause a significant global cooling that I would wager would cause a much larger drop in global temperature than .10 degC as you claim. It would be at least .54 degC as calculated from more correctly calculating the change from the earth flux because of the global mobile heat transport from the tropics. From there you would have to add feedbacks that amply the effect because of the unspooling of the water vapor optical depth.

Water vapor feedback cannot be all that much.
The forcing for water vapor is supposed to be about 15 watts for a
doubling.

The increase in temperature from from a doubling of CO2, without
feedback, is acknowledged by everyone to be about 3.8 watts/m^2, which
would result in an increase of around 1C. I’ve seen actual estimates
ranging from 0.7 C to 1.2 C. With a 1C increase, the saturation level
of water vapor would increase 7%. That 7% increase implies a
[(ln 1.07)/(ln 2)] * 15 watts = 0.0677/0.6931 =3D 1.47 watts/m^2.

That’s if there was NO increase in precipitation, NO change in
convection, No
change in clouds.
Trenbeth’s figures give about 390 watts in heating the surface
directly, 22 watts convection, and 78 watts in latent heat.
Climate models
predict an increase in precipitation less than the increase in
humidity, around 3% rather than the full 7%.
Multiplying 78 watts by that 1.03 increse in precipitation gives
an increase in watts of 2.34 in latent heat of
vaporization. The net increase in SURFACE flux with a doubling of CO2 and water
vapor feedback would be
6.23 -2.34= 3.89. If there was a 3% increase in clouds in addition to
3% increased precipitiation,
that same 3% increase would increse earth’s albedo from about 0.3 to
1.03*0.3 = .309.
The net wattage hitting earth’s surface from the sun would drop from
about
235 watts to 0.691/0.7 or 0.987*235. Multiply the wattage increase
from the CO2 and water vapor positive feedback by the cloud negative
feedback and you get
(396.23/390)*.987 = 1.003 or a net increase of 1.17 watts, and some of that 1.17 watts would have to go into the latent heat of vaporization.

Alan, I think you have made an error in your second paragraph. A doubling of CO2 would increase T by more than the CO2 only doubling calculation you did. As CO2 is increased the water feedback increases T much more than your calculation in which CO2 and H20 are considered separately. Or have I misunderstood you. Eric

Eric: You’re wrong. The positive feedback on water vapor has not been verified, but instead the opposite is true The actual absolute humidities have been lowering in the upper troposphere, not increasing indicating a negative feedback to water vapor:

Appell, the references you list are out of date. The references listed by Chuck are more recent and more comprehensive. If you hope to make your point then you must show that Chuck’s references are wrong, which you cannot do.

Eric: Water vapor doesn’t have to be “well mixed” to cause significant changes to the OLR. If the upper troposphere becomes dryer where there isn’t much water vapor found, the increased emission from warmer, lower altitudes would be significantly increased.

According to the IR radiative transfer equations, absorption is not nearly as dependent on temperature as is emission.

Gordon, you say: “Of course, water vapor is the big positive feedback gas.” Do you understand that this is an assumption? When tested against robust satellite temperature data and radiosondes, the present day climate models FAIL badly”

Really? But when you heat up a pan of liquid water, the vapor concentration in the air above the water increases, does it not? So I have a great deal of trouble understanding why increased T on the surface of the Earth would not increase water vapor concentration in the atmosphere. In other words, might there not be some serious error in the “robust” satellite data you cite? Eric

Ed, So by your more “advanced analysis” you think that making water on the Earth’s surface warmer will not lead to higher water vapor concentrations in the atmosphere. Thus your suggestion that warmer water does not do that suggests to me that something in your “advanced analysis” is badly haywire.

Dear Eric, Andy May wrote a recent article that illustrates how the Earth’s climate is complicated. He does not mention a pan of water but his article makes it clear how the Earth is more complicated. Here is a link to his article:

His article itself includes several relevant links. His key points as they relate to our discussion are (a) In the past millions of years when the Earth was much warmer, the temperatures in the tropics were not much different than now. (b) Tropical temperatures are “evaporatively buffered” to a maximum temperature of about 30C. (c) Additional heating is transported to higher latitudes.

He links to a published paper that goes into more details about how the temperature in the tropics is evaporatively buffered.

Ed, I got into this exchange one on of your other threats primarily to deliver the following scientific comment:

“The heat content of the crust of the Earth is determined by just three things: the solar flux at our position in the Sun’s solar system, the degree of reflection (albedo) of that incoming solar radiation and the magnitude of heat insulation (the greenhouse effect) provided by the contents of our atmosphere . That’s it. And one of these has been changing relatively rapidly since the beginning of the Industrial Age – that is the latter variable, the greenhouse (or insulation) effect. So just as you get warmer if you put on a heavier coat, the Earth gets warmer as the concentrations of its long-lived greenhouse gases increases. Therefore, anyone who knows a bit of physics knows that the heat content of the Earth has to be increasing –just as measurements and observations show that it is.
Now exactly how that increased heat content affects all corners of the Earth is indeed very complex and provides the basis of another field called Meteorology – a field that is not nearly as well understood. So while the physics of total heating is clear – global warming has to be occurring – exactly how and how fast it affects conditions all around the entire globe (the associated meteorology, that is) is not as clear and is not as well understood. Thus, to say that the total heat content of the world is not increasing is dead wrong and silly if being said by someone claiming to be a physicist.”

So Ed, if your think there is a 4th or even more factors involved than I have included in this simple, for-starters model, please tell us what that is. You tend to confuse the physical basis of AGW (which is relatively straightforward) with the spread of the extra energy throughout the planet (which is very complicated). Thus to say that AGW is not occurring is to not understand the very basic physics of the Earth’s total heat content

So Ed, you can prove my wrong simply by telling us what that missing 4th variable is or, possibly, that the is no greenhouse effect.

Dear Eric, There is nothing wrong with your basic physics 101 about climate. However, the atmosphere and all processes that affect climate compose a very complex system. A complex systems typically responds in ways that can contradict the simple view of the system.

Neither of us argues that climate does not change. You have assumed the primary driver of climate change is human emissions of carbon dioxide. That is your hypothesis. We can test your hypothesis.

Your hypothesis fails several tests. Gordon and Chuck have explained tests that you hypothesis fails. The four papers I referenced show your hypothesis is wrong.

To review, climate models that use your hypothesis to predict future climate way over-predict heating.

Data show water vapor is not a strong positive feedback that results from carbon dioxide increase.

Soon has shown that carbon dioxide does not even correlate well with global temperature, but solar irradiation does.

Evans has shown why climate models fail. When he corrects the math and physics in climate models then their predictions much better match data. His work shows carbon dioxide is not a strong driver of climate.

Salby shows that carbon dioxide concentration follows temperature rather than vice-versa. I will discuss this further in reply to your comments about Salby.

The major point here is we must always look for and accept data that contradicts our hypotheses. Data contradicts your hypothesis of global warming. That does not mean global warming and global cooling do not occur. It only means our carbon dioxide emissions are not a significant factor in causing global warming or cooling.

In other words, your climate hypothesis is wrong. All good scientists reject their hypotheses when data show the hypothesis is wrong. Having a hypothesis fail is not a sign of a bad scientist. It is a sign of a good scientist who has made a good try. The good scientist will accept when a hypothesis has failed.

Ed, The data your guys are focusing on is mainly that of the last decade or two. Yet none your guys adequately include the affect of increased particulates over that period which have significantly increased primarily because of China and India. The data show a decrease in the amount of warming over that period – yes, over the same time that CO2 was increasing. But it increasingly appears that the increased albedo effect of those increased particulates might very well be the cause of the slower warming. Note also that the particulates can be removed on a time scale of months while the excess CO2 will be the gift to your descendants that “keeps on giving” for several centuries.
In short, your guys should go back to their computers and include all of the variables that might have affected T in the past.
Eric

Dear Eric, Unfortunately, your guys own the climate models and the money that goes with them. Your guys are the ones who should have, and possibly have, included particulates in the models.

On the flip side, the climate models that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars have failed. The developers and government sponsors of the climate models purport their models have included all the necessary physics and meteorology into the models. Yet their model predictions are wrong. Therefore, the combination of all the hypotheses they have inserted into the models is wrong.

Your side depends upon the claims of climate models. Since they have failed, your side has no scientific basis to claim our carbon dioxide emissions cause significant global warming.

My side has presented hypotheses about how solar radiation can affect cloud cover, which in turn would affect albedo. My side has presented hypotheses about how water vapor decreases rather than increases in response to increases in carbon dioxide, and thereby reduces or even cancels the heating effect of increased carbon dioxide.

My side (Evans) has revealed math and physics errors in climate models. When he correct for these errors, the climate models errors reduce considerably and produce negligible global warming. Since he is on my side, Evans can get no government funding for his years of work. He has done his work on climate models for free.

Appell, both Gordon and Chuck have provided the proof you request of Mary.

In addition, you have changed the subject and the burden of proof. No one suggests that water vapor feedback is “nonexistent.” You, on the other hand, continue to claim added carbon dioxide causes a positive water vapor feedback that is strong enough to cause dangerous global warming.

Data, shown by Chuck and Gordon, contradict your assumption. Your response is to reject data that contradicts your assumption. Then you cherry pick some other scientific report that seems to support you assumption. In so doing, you have rejected the scientific method.

You support a hypothesis. You and all who support a hypothesis have the burden of proof. Maybe you do not understand what “burden of proof” means. It means that if anyone finds one condition where your hypothesis fails then you lose the argument.

So you cannot, if you wish to function as a scientist, counter a contradiction of your hypothesis with your cherry-picked data that seems to support your hypothesis. If you are a real scientist, you must accept that your hypothesis is wrong.

David Appell: I am simply not interested in your responses to my questions for Dr. Fulks. My reading experiences of various websites (which include some of your statements) leads me to conclude you are probably a major cause of global warming…empty hot air. C Wells

Ed, Took the trouble to read and listen to the “wisdom” of Murray Salby. Tight off the block, one can see that his ideas are “off the wall’ silly. Mainly he thinks that our elevated CO2 levels, 400 ppm today versus 280 ppm throughout the Holocene and just before the Industrial Age, was due to natural emissions caused by a T increase. He does not explain this why T increased but thinks that it did for some other reason and this then caused CO2 to increase. Also, he ignores the important C isotopic info that has shown that the extra C in our atm today came from old (fossilized) carbon. For a more complete analysis of Salby’s “work” see,

Appell, Your response echoes the type of response you have argued against in your comments. Your response contains no science and is 100 percent personal attack on Salby. Your response suggests that understanding Salby’s book and lectures are above your pay grade.

Dear Eric, You and your reference to a “complete analysis” admit that Salby has shown that CO2 follow temperature rather than vice-versa. Neither you nor your reference have shown that Salby made any mistakes in his analysis.

But because Salby’s analysis contradicts your preconceived assumptions about climate, you call him “off the wall silly” and “scientific crap.”

Here’s what you missed. Your claims are but hypotheses. Salby’s analysis has no hypotheses. Salby uses advanced math and data to show how carbon dioxide relates to temperature. Unless you can show his calculations are wrong, which you cannot, then you must accept his result.

Salby is under no obligation to additionally propose how temperature increased in the past, as you suggest.

You, on the other hand, are scientifically obligated to accept Salby’s analysis, and to reject your hypotheses that do not conform with Salby’s analysis, and to form, if you can, new hypotheses that do conform to Salby’s analysis.

You claim Salby “ignores the important C isotopic info that has shown that the extra C in our atm today came from old (fossilized) carbon.” If you properly listened to his lectures or read his book then you will see that Salby has also proven your isotope claim is wrong.

Therefore, your rejection of Salby’s work fails. Salby uses math and data without adding climate assumptions. You think your climate assumptions prevail over math (that you probably do not understand) and data. Your scientific error is that you do not accept that data and its proper analysis prevails over your hypotheses.

Your following comments are out of order in a scientific discussion:

The guy is a wacko who conveniently ignores the basic common sense of it all while he hides behind equations that also include the non sense of his unwarranted assumptions.

Ed, do you actually read more than the titles of the scientific crap that you recommend? Perhaps you should stick to politics which, of course, is the only reason you pretend to be a scientist.

The error that Salby made was that he looked at correlations between the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 (ppmv/yr) and temperature, over the period ~1980 to 2008. If you look at figure 2 in this you’ll notice a pretty impressive correlation. What you’ll also notice is that the CO2 growth rate doesn’t vary about a rate of 0 ppmv/yr, it varies about a value of 1.6 – 1.8ppmv/yr. A correlation calculation like this does not depend on an approximately constant offset.

So, what is causing that constant offset of between 1.6 and 1.8ppmv/yr? That bit is us. The variability is indeed due to temperature variations. The global average temperature is not constant, with the NH typically slightly warmer than the SH. This leads to variations in ocean uptake, and also variations due variations in the biosphere. However, the calculation that Salby did can tell you nothing about what is causing the offset in the growth rate. So, that Salby identified a known correlation between temperature and CO2 growth rate does not indicate that the long-term trend (the 1.6 – 1.8ppmv/yr in Figure 2 in that link) is not anthropogenic.

As i am just a lay person most of the above went straight over my head. However your learned discussion prompts me to ask a question.

I understand from what I read that the available data show that co2 levels rise after a rise in temperature, is this correct? and if it is my question is, how can global warming be being caused by our co2 output?

Appell: You refuse to admit that you or anyone else has not made a sound scientific case that the human component of CO2 emissions are having any measurable impact upon climate.

Clear sky OLR restricted to the wavelengths of the 15 micron band of CO2 are not proof of anything related to the claim that humans are warming the earth from CO2 emissions. The problem is far more complicated involving the hydrological cycle which negates the effects claimed by your pseudoscience.

CO2 doesn’t stop being a forcing agent just because clouds are present. It doesn’t stop being a forcing agent where water vapor is scarce, like in the stratosphere and polar regions. It doesn’t stop being a forcing agent when water vapor is present, because there are many, many frequencies for which they don’t overlap. (We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of absorption bands.) Figure 2 here shows that explicitly:

“Salby and others have shown that changes in atmospheric CO2 follow changes in temperature, both up and down.”

Not when independent agents are digging up carbon and burning it as fast as they can. Just where do you think all that CO2 production goes, anyway?

The truth is that temperature and CO2 have mutually reinforcing feedbacks on one another. The glacial-interglacial temperature difference in recent ice age oscillations would be about 1/3rd smaller without these feedbacks.

For someone who invokes the scientific method, you do seem to have a rather strange view of how it works. Highlighting a set of papers/ideas that suggest CO2 has little impact on our climate and suggesting that others need to prove these wrong, is very obviously not how it works. A new idea is not correct until proven wrong.

Murry Salby is very obviously wrong as he is trying to correlate the growth of atmospheric CO2 with variations in temperature. The problem here is that if you do this, then the long-term trend ends up simply being an offset (i.e., he has considered a period over which it is almost constant). An offset makes no difference to a correlation calculation and therefore it’s no surprise that he finds a strong correlation with variations in temperature; he has designed it so that he cannot find a correlation with our emissions.

The Soon, Connolly and Connolly paper suffers – I think – from a similar problem. A signal that shows variability will correlate well whatever is producing that variability. That doesn’t mean that there is no underlying long-term trend from something that is varying on a much longer timescale.

David Evans if very confused about how climate models work. Rather than explaining his confusion, I will simply link to this.

Ed,
Odd, you seem to hold others to a higher standard than you hold yourself? I’m not actually anonymous, just pseudonymous. Normally when I comment on climate blogs, someone pops along to point out who I am. Given the tone of your comment, I suspect doing so myself is probably not worth it.

and Then There’ Physics:
Obviously, from your posts, you have tremendous knowledge of physics…more so than Willie Soon. Please inform us where your knowledge was obtained? Where did you get your Phd, or credentials in physics? You should provide us with reasonable validation of your experience or position papers to support your attacks on Soon, the Connollys, Salby, etc. I imagine you have read Salby’s “Physics of the Atmosphere” in detail, and can support your criticism of Salby, pointing out where he is error….of course, with detailed mathematical and physical analysis. This comment applies to Appell also….

I was immersed in the scientific method as an undergrad at Caltech, beginning with Linus Pauling. I formally studied the scientific method under John Kemeny at Dartmouth College, in his “Philosophy of Science” course, as a part of my MA degree in physics. Kemeny learned the scientific method when he worked under Albert Einstein. I learned more of the scientific method from my PhD mentor Friedwart Winterberg, who learned it from his PhD mentor Heisenberg. I had to explicitly use the scientific method in my PhD thesis.

From what source did you learn the scientific method?

You claim “Murry Salby is very obviously wrong.” Then show exactly where he made his math error. He wrote the textbook on the “Physics of the Atmosphere.” What textbook have you written?

You claim the Soon, Connolly and Connolly paper is wrong. The key finding of their paper is solar irradiance correlates with temperature much better than CO2 correlate with temperature. Climate models assume CO2 strongly drives climate and that the sun has little effect. So please explain exactly where Soon made his mistake in his data or correlation. It looks pretty straight-forward to me.

You claim “David Evans is very confused about how climate models work.” Evans describes his work in detail. Please show where he made his math mistake.

You reference your article where you claim Evans is mistaken. You think he errors in his concern about the numerical integration of the partial differential equations in the climate models. I claim Evans is correct. I base my claim on my own experience with numerical models that integrate very complicated differential equations.

You use the example of the Navier-Stokes equation which uses partial differential equations in three dimensions. In this limited case, the partial differential equations are with respect to independent variables x, y, and z (or their transformation into spherical coordinates).

But Evans is talking about the more complicated problem that is fundamental to basic climate models. Heat transfer. First, those NS equations must calculate the movement of water vapor in varying densities. Water vapor, CO2, and other gases interact with radiation. Radiation causes heating and cooling at each point in the atmosphere. Surface effect are complicated. Basic climate models must consider how all these variables affect radiation over a range of wavelengths and produce as a result data on how the earth’s surface and atmosphere change with time. This problem can only be described in terms of partial differential equations of dependent variables.

Even the book I first studied (to do my PhD thesis) on numerical analysis “Numerical Mathematical Analysis” by James Scarborough, talks about the special problems of integrating partial differential equations.

I conclude from reading your critique of Evans that your knowledge of numerical analysis and climate models if far inferior to that of Evans.

Ed,
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think name-dropping all the people one has worked with is necessarily an indication that one understands the scientific method.

I think I’ve alread explained the issue with Salby’s analysis (I don’t know why you brought up his book; I certainly haven’t suggested that he is wrong about everything). See my comment upthread for the explanation.

As far as Soon, Connolley & Connolley is concerned, correllation doesn’t imply causation and their strong correllation is slightly surprising, given that TSI has been dropping while temperatures continue to rise.

I think you and Evans are both wrong about climate models solving partial differential equations of dependent variables. What Evans discusses are actually emergent properties of the models. It is true that one might quantify these by determining the change with temperture (using the output from a model). However, it is not correct that such equations are actually evolved within the model.

Dear Pseudonymous (Then There’s Physics), I was not “name-dropping.” You challenged my education and experience in the scientific method in a public forum. You assumed your challenge was correct as you criticized the referenced authors. I responded by giving a very brief summary of why I am qualified to teach the scientific method.

I asked you to provide evidence that you understand the scientific method. You did not answer. I conclude from your lack of an answer and from your mistaken statement about the scientific method, that you do not understand the scientific method.

Indeed, correlation does not prove causation. Yet climate alarmist base their claims on correlation without causation. Further, lack of correlation proves lack of causation. That is the point Soon et al have made. Since CO2 concentration does not correlate with temperature, this proves CO2 after all feedbacks does not cause temperature change, at least to the first approximation.

As to your point that temperature has not dropped while TSI has fallen, Evans explains why. It’s because the temperature lags TSI by one solar cycle. We will be able to test Evans’ hypothesis in a few more years because it predicts we will see a temperature drop beginning after about 2018.

Since we do not have a printout of climate model software before us, we cannot determine who is correct about whether climate models use partial differential equations to in their predictions. Suffice it to say that the mathematical formulation of the problem does include partial differential equations. If the models do not solve the fundamental equations properly, then this will be another source of error in the climate models.

You precede your paragraphs with “I think.” That indicates the value of your comments is only about what you “think.” Physics and math professionals usually require a more substantial defense of one’s position.

Ed,
I didn’t challenge your education. I suggested that a piece of research is not correct until proven wrong. The scientific method doesn’t involve publishing things and then challenging others to prove them wrong, it involves providing evidence to support your position.

I conclude from your lack of an answer and from your mistaken statement about the scientific method, that you do not understand the scientific method.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You might want to consider the irony of concluding this while claiming I don’t understand the scientific method.

Yet climate alarmist base their claims on correlation without causation.

This is simply not true.

Further, lack of correlation proves lack of causation.

Excpect that you haven’t shown that there is no correlation between rising atmospheric CO2 and rising temperatures. You’ve claimed a correlation with solar variability. The existence of this correlation is not evidence that CO2 does not influence temperatures.

It’s because the temperature lags TSI by one solar cycle.

How does this work? Even if you include the ocean’s mixed layer, the heat capacity is insufficient to explain an 11-year lag.

We will be able to test Evans’ hypothesis in a few more years because it predicts we will see a temperature drop beginning after about 2018.

I know. Bizarre. Somehow Evans thinks we can accrue energy at a rate close to 1W/m^2 while still cooling. That would seem to violate a number of pretty fundamental laws of physics.

You precede your paragraphs with “I think.” That indicates the value of your comments is only about what you “think.” Physics and math professionals usually require a more substantial defense of one’s position.

I use “I think” because sometimes I am indeed wrong and because, as a scientist, I feel uncomfortable appearing absolutely certain. I notice you haven’t commented yet on my critique of Salby’s analysis.

When others (me) provided a summary of his resume in this thread, you called it bragging. But forget it. Let’s just acknowledge that you were a close person friends with the likes of Pauling, Fehnman, Einstein and other famous, but now dead (fortunately) and move on to some science that can be tested by observations.

Your other new best friend, Salby, used the T’s of the recent decades when a slowdown of surface warming was being observed. He assigns this to a lower than usual T sensitivity to CO2 – thus getting what he wants – a lack of T dependence on in increasing CO2. However, he does not know what all of the factors were in affecting T during that period. For a thorough review of these see the recent (march 2016) paper at http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3058.html
Its major point was to argue for a larger than expected role of reflective aerosols both natural and manmade over that period.

Thus it would appear that Salby did not give sufficient attention to what went into his model. I know you like models (those down by your friends anyway) but all modeler know that crap in = crap out.

This, along with his suggestion that the excess CO2 came from natural sources and not from fossil fuels is not just wrong, its bonkers.

Dear David, We are having a scientific discussion. If you wish to rebut something Lindzen has published, then do so in detail.

However, your use of a quote by Pierrehumbert to criticize Lindzen has no use in a scientific discussion. As we know, it is simple to find a quote by someone that criticizes anyone in the public arena, from politicians to scientists. Such quote are meaningless.

Concerning the “scientific method” that has been mentioned several times on this threat – the heart of it is very, very simple and not anything mysterious. It can be explained many ways – but that related by Richard Feynman at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw will do. He says the sci method consists of the following 3 step.

1. Guess – what the reasons are = theory
2. Think about the consequences of that, if correct.
3. test consequences against observations (nature)

If 3 does not support expected consequences, discard or modify 1 and repeat 2 and 3 until better agreement is reached,

I am certain that feynman would also agree that we should never stop this cycle as new information and techniques are found. The goal of science is to get as close to the “truth” as we can – even though we might never get to the total and complete truth. That is, we do our best to identify the most probable explanations and use those tentative conclusions wisely while they are being continuously tested and changed by steps 1 – 3 of the “scientific method”

Having reviewed the “scientific method” as explained by Richard Feynman, one can now better see the relative merits of our various scientific views on agw. That of Lindzen, for example, who thinks that water vapor provides a negative feedback to increased warming enjoys very little support in the literature. The little support it does have comes from some observations claimed by some scientists that suggest water vapor concentrations are not as high as they should be at some regions of the Earths atmosphere at some times of year. Dr. Berry thinks this is grounds for throwing out the more accepted view that has been carefully studied and repeatedly modified since Arrhenius first proposed it in 1896.

Because the “scientific method” has been used so thoroughly to investigate all different models or guesses as to the causes of agw, my favorite view of water vapor is that it provides a strong positive feedback to the warming caused by anything – including increases in CO2. In comparison to the support for this model, the support for Lindzen’s claim is puny.